


An Integrated Life

by ladyoneill



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Mating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2013-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-13 19:29:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyoneill/pseuds/ladyoneill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter Hale has known from childhood that he's gay, but as he grows older the wolf inside him starts craving a female mate and cubs.  It takes him nearly a decade to accept this side of himself and the fact that the wolf and man are one, tied by the lunar cycle.  So, he will make this work and make himself whole and happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Integrated Life

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Queer Fest 2013 over on Dreamwidth, my first ever entry there, so I hope my attempt at controlling my tendencies to write killer angst and make characters miserable kept this fic in the spirit of the Fest. There is a bit of angst and unhappiness but then this is Peter both before and after the fire.
> 
> The prompt was: any fandom, any character; character is a werewolf and their sexuality is dependent on the phase of the moon. When I read it, Peter immediately popped into my head, along with the idea that, at the full moon, his wolf craves a female mate and cubs, while the rest of the time, he's gay. Used my normal fanon back story of Marta and Gracie as his mate and cub. Oh, there's a tiny mention of Derek/Stiles because... Stiles' mom's name is also my own fanon. I went with 98% of fandom in naming his dad John.

Curled in their bed, Peter strokes his mate's flat stomach, tickling until she laughs and grabs his hand.

"You can't feel anything yet. Not even a bump."

He places his head down gently on the curve of her waist and listens. "I can hear its heart beating, though."

She laughs again and threads her fingers through his hair. "You need a haircut."

"I do not. I have very fashionable hair," he says, giving her a pout. When their eyes meet, he sees the heat flare in hers and feels an answering heat in his groin. It's two days before the full moon and his wolf's needs have come to the fore.

Grinning, Peter crawls up Marta's body and kisses her.

"Are you sure?" she asks, because she always asks. There were never any illusions between them.

As an answer he rocks his growing erection against her hip and she moans softly and clutches him to her.

Later, naked now, they curl together again and she strokes her fingers over his chest and stomach as his breathing slowly evens out. "You're not going to go all male and forbid me from the hunt in two nights are you?"

"And why would I do that when you're the swiftest hunter we have?" he replies, confused.

She glances up at him from where her head rests on his shoulder. "Because I'm pregnant?"

"Love, as long as you feel strong enough to run and hunt, I'm all for it. You'll know when to slow down."

Marta smiles. "My father and brothers always keep the pregnant females confined to the den."

"Well, that's just completely Victorian."

He grins when she laughs.

"Well, good, because I plan to bring down that twelve point stag we've seen the last few full moons."

"And I will howl in pleasure and pride when you do."

*****

Two weeks later, when the moon is almost completely new and barely in view in the sky, Peter straightens his tie, then fusses with it and unties it as it just won't lay flat.

Marta slips up behind him and expertly fashions the knot. In the mirror their eyes meet and Peter gives her an apprehensive look.

"Are you sure?"

"Peter, I went into this marriage with eyes wide open, remember? I haven't cared the last year, why would my being pregnant make it any different?"

"I just..." His shoulders sag and she grips them squeezing them and resting her chin on one--in her high heels she is nearly his height. "I feel like I shouldn't want this."

"Peter, my love, you're gay. It's what you are, and I've always known that and it doesn't matter." A small kiss is placed on the nape of his neck, over the pale scars that remain of her mating bite, and a shiver goes through him.

Not of lust, but of love for this kind, passionate, fascinating woman, who chose him despite knowing he would never truly be hers.

"Now, go have fun, be careful and safe, and I'll see you in the morning. I have a busy evening planned with your sister, going through her boxes of baby clothes," she encourages with a pat to his ass, before moving away from him.

"You're too good to me, but, please, darling, don't let her give you any of those horrid sailor suits she forced Derek to wear."

"I have much better taste than that."

His eyes skim over her fashionable wrap dress and he smiles. "Very true." With a peck to her cheek, he heads out of their bedroom and down the stairs where his Alpha sister is wearing a grubby, shapeless t-shirt and baggy jeans while she helps Laura with her Spanish verb conjugation. Talia gives him a smile and an arched eyebrow, but she's known for longer than he has that he's gay and doesn't care either.

As Peter drives to the quieter of the two gay clubs in Beacon Hills--a hundred year old gentleman's club he was introduced to his by his Great Uncle Frederick on the evening of his eighteenth birthday--he ponders how lucky he is to have a mate so understanding, who loves him despite the fact that, physically, only his wolf wants her, and only then when its more in control, at the full moon.

It took him nearly a decade to become comfortable enough with that fact--that his wolf wanted a female mate to mount and sire cubs on--to begin searching for one. It helped that he wasn't the only gay werewolf in his Pack while he was growing up and learning to accept who he was. Uncle Frederick was mated to his Aunt Ginny for nearly forty five years before her death and sired four cubs on her. They were happy together and very much in love. And every month, for a week or two, Frederick spent time with other men.

Peter knows that in the human world this is considered wrong--though the number of unfaithful married men and women isn't small--but in wolf packs, it's not. He's doing his duty to his bloodline, his wolf is content with a female mate and a cub on the way. Marta had her own reasons for joining her life to his--she wanted out of her very traditional pack, wanted cubs of her own, and, frankly, didn't want a male who was as overly possessive as her father, uncles and brothers were.

They are well suited, both human and wolf.

The club is quiet with soft music playing and low conversations from the men--and a dozen or so women--scattered around the large space. Ned is waiting for him on one of the many loveseats, twelve year old Scotch in hand and another being delivered for Peter as he joins him. They kiss and Peter tastes the smoky whisky on his lover's lips before pulling away and taking a sip from his own glass.

Ned is human, but he knows about werewolves, knows that Peter is mated to a woman who's pregnant, but they don't talk about her. They've been together for nearly three years and it wasn't always easy between them. While Ned readily accepted the wolf inside him, he still sometimes struggles with the wolf's heterosexuality. During the months leading up to the marriage, he finally just declared Peter bisexual in his own head and left it at that.

Peter knows how lucky he is that Ned didn't leave him, still loves him. In this day and age, most men wouldn't tolerate having to share their lover, but they're happy together, and Ned loves his own independence.

If they lived together, they'd probably end up breaking up. For one thing, Ned is a slob.

"You need a haircut," Peter teases as his fingers run through the too-long bangs of his lover.

Grinning, Ned shakes his head. "If I cut it, what will you hold onto?"

Peter chuckles and leans in for another kiss. "So, are you over your block?" His lover is a talented horror novelist who had his first breakout novel when, once he knew they were real, he turned to writing about werewolves.

"Finally," Ned sighs in relief. "I churned out two chapters today. They might suck, but at least I'm writing."

"Can I read them tonight?"

"When I'm done with you."

Peter grins and his cock twitches in anticipation. This time of the month, when the moon is a sliver, is when he craves Ned's touch the most, though they usually spend many nights together during the rest of the month except for right around the full moon. This month has gone by with little contact, though. First his lover was ill, and then Peter was out of town on business so they haven't been together since before the last full moon.

Being tied to the lunar cycle is nothing new to him. His moods change subtly as the moon waxes and wanes. When he was a child the shifts were greater--much more aggressive at the full moon and passive at the new--but as he's grown older, more in control of his wolf and their integration, he doesn't really notice his emotional state changing all that much. He loves Ned passionately, needs his touch and his body, but he also loves Marta as a companion and friend. They live together and are making a good life together.

The physical side, wanting his mate for those four or so days around the full moon, he's grown used to, even looks forward to, as it pleases the wolf in him and makes him content with his life.

"So, dinner here or...?"

"I'm craving pizza, Chicago style."

Ned grins and sets down his empty glass. "Then Gino's it is."

As they leave hand in hand, they greet a few friends, and then walk out into the cool night air.

Beacon Hills is a fairly liberal town and, while Peter wasn't out as a teenager--a popular jock in a school where no gay kids were out on top of being a werewolf kept him closeted--as an adult he has no problem walking down the street, holding his male lover's hand. He's never been hassled and counts himself lucky in that. Ned moved here from a small town in Texas where homophobia was rampant in too many places.

This town is also small, though, and Peter knows that most residents know he's married and also gay, but no one has ever questioned him about it. He and Marta have several human friends in the community. He's a chemist at a small company outside the town. She's active with the local women's shelter and reads to the kids at story hour at the library. They're both well liked.

The Hales are fully integrated into the community they helped found nearly two hundred years ago when they discovered gold in the hills and streams of the Preserve.

Ned holds the door to the pizza parlor for him and Peter smiles at him, then nods at the Sheriff, his wife and precocious little boy who has pizza sauce smeared from head to foot and is making the man laugh as his exasperated wife tries to clean him up.

"Peter, Ned."

"John. I see you have your hands full, Gwyneth."

The pretty blonde sighs and swipes at the boy's face as he squirms. "Worth it, Peter. Worth every second." Her eyes settle on him, glinting golden, though human in the ambient light.

There's always been something very knowing about that woman. He and Marta haven't told anyone outside the Pack and Ned about her pregnancy but he has a feeling Gwyneth Stilinski knows.

"The new three meat pizza is very good," John suggests as the men move past them to a table.

"Peter is very much a carnivore," Ned teases.

And, when they sit down, Peter leans in and whispers, "I do love...meat."

Ned laughs and they order the meat loaded pizza.

*****

A mating is for life, though it never forces fidelity, either physical or emotional, on a werewolf. 

Love doesn't always last though.

His break up with Ned occurs two years after the best day of Peter's life, the day his beautiful female cub, Gracie, is born, and it's amicable enough. They both simply fell out of love with each other.

Over the next few years he dates occasionally, but mostly devotes himself to his mate and cub and the Pack. As he approaches his thirty-fourth birthday, Peter doesn't need sex all the time, and finds as much comfort and companionship with male friends as lovers. Marta adores him as her best friend, and they are actively trying for a second cub. He wants that. His wolf wants that, and that makes all of him happy.

Peter is gay. He has always been gay. But, he's also a werewolf and his needs are different from a human's. It took a while to work it all out, to reach his own understanding of his nature, but there's no disconnect between his wolf and his human sides. They are one now as they were so easily in his childhood. In the human world he's a confusing contradiction, but he really doesn't care.

His Pack, his family, love him.

*****

The morning after Marta told him she thought she was pregnant again they sleep late and Peter awakens to her scream, to find a shotgun smelling of wolfsbane in his face, and a young woman he's seen around town the last few months, grinning nastily at him.

His heart sinks to his stomach and he reaches for his mate to comfort her in the face of what he knows is their end.

*****

Nearly seven years later Peter sits at the bar at the gentleman's club. It hasn't changed at all, though he certainly has. There's a predatory look in his eyes as he slips them from man to man. He's been with several of them over the last year, never more than a few times each. It's sex pure and simple, because his heart died with Marta and Gracie and his family, and he doesn't trust humans any longer, doesn't believe he'll ever come close to loving one again as he had Ned.

But, it has been a year since he healed and his brain, damaged by the fire, is whole again. The Alpha Pack is behind them, the Hunter's War just ended, and the Pack is beginning to thrive. Derek finally listens to his advice and, while he'll never be forgiven for killing Laura, they have reached a kind of peace, and are family again.

That family needs to expand. Bitten wolves are all well and good, and it looks like it won't be long before there are cubs running around the rebuilt Hale House again. But, they won't be of the blood and that's needed for a strong Alpha to follow Derek. Peter's not convinced his nephew, still broken by Kate Argent, will ever find the strength to seek a female mate, although he may allow John and Gwyneth's son, still precocious but no longer a little boy, into his life enough to take him as a lover.

So, it's up to Peter and, in truth, his wolf, aging and without cubs, is growing restless, pulling away from him again. The integration is no longer stable; it hasn't been completely since the fire that nearly destroyed him. He's hoping a mate will help strengthen both parts of him and make him whole again, something a human, male lover could never do.

Love may never come to him again, he may simply be unable to feel that emotion for a mate or lover, but he's a werewolf and his needs are simple.

Pack, family, mate, cubs, sex, comfort, companionship. In those the wolf and human are one. The wolf has never needed love.

That night he goes to a discreet motel with a handsome banker named Evan, and the next day he goes home and starts contacting neighboring packs the Hales have new alliances with.

***** 

Angelina is perfect. Her mate was killed by hunters nearly two years before, leaving her with two small cubs. Since his death, she's been celibate and has no desire to love a man again, but she does want the stability of a mate and a new pack where she's not reminded daily of her late mate.

From their first telephone conversation, she and Peter get along well. They're both clear on what they want from the mating, and their courtship is swift. When they meet in Beacon Hills for the first time, she accompanied by a chaperone and her children, Peter is immediately drawn to her quiet strength and determination. He believes it might be enough to balance him. And when he holds her twenty month old daughter, he feels his dead heart lighten. The girl pulls on his nose and giggles, and he mock growls which makes her giggle harder.

"Your Alpha will accept them?"

He can hear the hint of desperation in Angelina voice. The Perez Pack is large, old, and male dominated. As an unmated female from another pack--a small one outside of Portland, Oregon--she has little status and her cubs have probably become lost in the hierarchy shuffle with the Alpha's cubs and those of his siblings. Her mate was a bitten wolf, taken into the pack because of his knowledge of herbal healing. With him dead, she has no real place, but, by tradition, her own pack won't take her back with cubs. Her only option is to find a new mate whose Alpha will accept her cubs.

"Yes." Derek loves cubs and wants to expand the pack, not only because it gives him strength and stability, but because he craves family so badly. These two little ones are born wolves--a simple pack bond bite from Derek will make them Hales. Peter's own mating bite to Angelina will make her one as well.

"And you're okay with my desire not to..." She explained in their first conversation that, except for the nights around the full moon, when driven by her wolf, she hasn't been able to want a man since her mate's death, and she didn't see herself wanting him any other times. 

Interrupting her with a nod, he says, "Our wolves will be mated. I hope we can be friends and parents to these two and others." If someday she wants to take lovers, well, that fits into his plans as well. He told her right off the bat that he was gay and would continue to seek out men as lovers and companions.

Smiling in relief, she nods and takes his hand. "Okay."

It's not love, but Peter's wolf grumbles in contentment and he can see her own flash in her eyes, drawn to him.

This will work. It's a new beginning.

And Peter is ready for it.

End


End file.
